Moving to Israel

As we approach Yom Kippur, the holy day of the Jewish year when we all hope to be written in for a successful year by Hashem, the talk of the Jewish world has been Binyamin Netanyahu’s (some would say “historic”) speech given in the UN on Thursday. For the most part, it has been accepted with a rare wall-to-wall praise both in Israel and abroad.

With a few exceptions, most noted the persuasiveness of the speech and how it will linger long in the minds of the international community who saw Netanyahu powerfully display the photograph of him with the plans for Auschwitz and took criticism for encouraging Israel to leave Gaza, and then condemning Israel in the Goldstone Report when it responded to the rocket attacks that resulted.

As we move towards the holiest time of the year for Jews, let’s hope the prime minister will keep up his strong and effective defense of Israel and hope that, with G-d’s help, our tiny country will prosper and thrive in the year ahead.

Ari

While this blog attempts to encourage moving to Israel and to let go of the places we now call home, it sometimes astonishes me how the leaders of these very places make it so very clear to us that we are not particularly welcome anyway.

The latest example of this comes courtesy of the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who has recommended that non-Muslims take the opportunity of the month of Ramadan to fast, along with their Muslim neighbors, in order to promote “understanding between cultures.”

Johnson told members of a London mosque that with Muslims so much a part of London life, it would be befitting for non-Muslims to get to know their fellow Londoners’ customs and religion better.

The implications of such a statement are extremely dubious. For one thing, as a local English Democrat leader Steve Uncles so wisely put it, “the indigenous culture of this country is based on Christianity and Paganism. Of course, as an open and tolerant society, if people want to practice other religions, then good luck to them. But the state should not be funding them because otherwise we will lose our culture.”

This is a great point but, what should be even more disturbing amongst the Jewish people is, as the author of the article, David Lev, puts it, “there was no word on whether London Mayor Johnson was planning to suggest that Muslims and Christians fast on Yom Kippur in order to better understand their Jewish neighbors.”

As we all know, this should not be expected to be happening anytime soon and the attempted appeasement of the Muslim population will likely, if history is any indication, come back to haunt the U.K. in the future.

Again, we need to come home. There is really no place for us in countries around the world whose leaders call for the further pandering of the Jew’s (and the West’s) most ruthless enemies. Let’s continue to make Aliyah, call Israel home and make it Hashem’s laws that we practice and celebrate.

Ari